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Learning by
HafenCity - Hamburg
Urban development is a learning process
HafenCity has changed its approach towards city development dramatically since producing a master plan. The understanding has grown that a mere fixation on building by the master plan scheme would not result in the desired urban, social, economic and cultural quality and the attempted look and feel.
“Cities are self organising systems of unusual complexity. To manage a system for resilience involves maintaining the capacity of the system to change. In social terms, it involves having flexible institutions that are capable of addressing change, responding to novel phenomena and keeping a multitude of options open�, Three lessons have been learned so far:
1. Increase complexity in terms of management.
During the development process the managerial approach has shifted from the physical features of the city to the social, cultural, economic and informational features. It was understood that an area such as HafenCity could only be developed by increasing dramatically the complexity of city development, in contradiction to the historical approaches of modernity seeking a simplification. Significantly increasing diversity and a fine-grained mixture of uses is a central element to a lively city.
2. Shift from planning to interaction.
Developing HafenCity is not just a planning process. It is an interactive process of actors with different institutional power. In order to heighten urban complexity, you have to develop strategic elements of social and cultural capacity, to increase the number of arenas in which urban development can take place, and to realign market actors and the State regulatory framework in a new way. In this way markets are created and not simply reflected.
JĂźrgen Bruns-Berentelg Hamburg